Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Porky and Daffy - Innovative Wackiness - The Double Bounce Butt Walk

I first saw "Porky and Daffy" at a party in BobClampett's studio. Bob used to show us 16 mm prints in his fun room. Mostly he showed his obviously brilliant color classics, but once in a while he would show us a really rare black and white.

He ran "Porky and Daffy" and sat there with a sly look on his face watching the reactions. We were all rolling on the floor laughing.After the cartoon was over we all looked at Bob with awe and shame and he said to us "You fellas have dirty minds". He looked exactly like Bugs Bunny, just gleeful at the sneaky gags he got away with in this otherwise innocent looking cartoon.

I've since watched Porky and Daffy at least a hundred times.

The more I see it, the more amazing ideas I find in it. It's a huge reservoir of clever ways to move things funny.

This early period of Clampett's career is often overlooked by historians, probably because on the surface the drawings themselves don't look as advanced as the later color cartoons.

Clampett's First Cartoons Were Something Completely New

But to me, this is the period where Warner Bros. really found its unique voice. Clampett was not only constantly trying new ideas - he gave the characters life.

His characters were living throbbing vessels of cartoon protoplasm. When you watch his cartoons, you aren't just sitting from a distance witnessing funny things happen to cardboard images.

You are instead pulled into the screen and invited to experience the things that the characters cause to happen from their own natural urges and motivations.

That in itself is a major innovation. But here is the one I am talking about in this post:

Ideas on every Level

The other one is that he found a way to insert all kinds of funny and inventive ways to move the characters. It seems that no detail escapes Clampett's thirst for invention.

Even actions and scenes that are not the focus of the storyline are creative.

Obviously, the focus of the scene is The Pelican dragging his anatomy across the canvas. The story point is just a connection between other scenes. Clampett can't bring himself to just let a continuity scene be merely functional. He finds room for fun in everything.

The pelican is hilarious and obvious, but behind him, Daffy walks by to sit on the stool. The walk is crazy and funny. It's a double bounce butt walk! Now if I had a funny walk like this is one of my cartoons, I would want to show it off. I'd wait till the Pelican did his bit, and then frame Daffy so that everyone could get a laugh out of that zany walk.

But to Bob, it's just a throwaway bit of inspired wackiness. He's got so many ideas, he doesn't really need to show each one off. This is the complete opposite of say Chuck Jones' approach. Jones will build whole cartoons around some central wacky idea and really point to it so that the audience and cartoon historians can't miss it. (the breast eyes in Claude Cat cartoons, for example)

Bob tosses away so many ideas that you can watch his cartoons over and over again and still find great stuff you would never have thought of in a million years.

And none of this stuff distracts from the main thrust of the story. The story is always completely and clearly told and you never have trouble following what he wants you to laugh at. He just adds in lots of easter eggs. The total entertainment effect is that everything is completely awake and alive and real. This totally wacky impossible world feels more real and fun than our own mundane 3 dimensional bland existence.

A lot of cartoon history and individual cartoons have been judged on innovation. If something was new and hadn't been done before, it has been traditionally considered a quality cartoon - regardless of the entertainment value.

Most art forms and entertainment are not solely judged on how innovative each work is. They are judged on their skill, their power to evoke emotion and other qualities.

Why is animation so frequently judged on merely how innovative it is?

My theory is because it is still a young field, and it grew and changed so fast between 1930 and 1950. Those cartoons are the best ever produced and at the time, the evolution in techniques was so rapid that you couldn't help but notice the changes. Animation historians of that period tend to judge the talent and creativity of the creators by how much of a change each cartoon or animator effected. Thus, purely entertaining highly skilled directors and animators generally get short shrift from critics. This explains Bob McKimson's poor place in history.

I don't know of a single animator or director alive today that is as skilled, entertaining or funny as Bob McKimson was, yet he gets a bad rap because he wasn't always innovating. He was merely a superhuman talent.

Clampett on the other hand was too innovative. He tried new things out all the time. The problem is he had so many ideas that most of them weren't picked up on by the rest of the business and so many went unnoticed by historians.

Disney had a methodical approach to growth and innovation. They had in house classes to improve their drawing skills, action analysis, etc... you could see progress in skill every month in their 30s cartoons. This also came with a process of discovering and creating rules.

Disney formulated rules to govern what was allowed to happen in their cartoons and what wasn't. This really influenced the rest of the artform.

Clampett innovated and grew through inspiration. He just had spur of the moment inspirations and tried them. He didn't make a preset bible of rules to follow.

His inspirations always fit the context and story that he was directing. He had focused inspirations. What was happening in the story would give him ideas of how to handle it.

His characterizations, his sense of fun and cartooniness and exaggeration did inspire and influence the rest of the industry but the innovation of using natural inspiration and plain fun in every aspect of cartoon making never quite caught on with anyone.

Hopefully now that people are noticing, it might influence the future of our great art form.

Hey John,I just spent the morning copying your lessons into a word document so I could print them off and study them. Your lessons are really helpful and now I don’t have to stare at a monitor all day to work from them. Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that its 400 pages long! And that’s just 2006! You know more about Clampett then is physically healthy so if anyone should write a book on him I think it should be you! Think about it. Anyway, just saying thanks for helping me get better at drawing and showing all of us some great cartoons.Later,Pete

hi, this isn't totally related to your current post but i was wondering about another Bob Clampett cartoon which i think has some of the most awesome animation ever: "Hare Ribbin" ... unfortunately most of the cartoon has that ugly water effect over the animation... is there, by some miraculous chance, a copy of this cartoon where they shot the animation WITHOUT the water effect?

just wanted to offer a post idea: talking about cartoon animals that walk on 2 legs... i was just thinking about disney and how they started with the successful mickey, donald, and goofy then they started making only animals that walked in their natural way until bedknobs and broomsticks and Robin Hood, and then went back to normal animal behavior after that. as a kid i loved robin hood but hated Oliver and Company, Aristocats and Fox and the Hound... (as far as i remember WB never did 4 legged animals, well except for horses, and Horton) i'd love to hear your thought on this stuff

Oh and this OT but I was tuning in and out, mostly out, of AN EXTREMELY GOOFY MOVIE. Oh boy ! The tude !!!!! I like how they wanted us to belive a serious lament from Goofy. Also how they take Goofy's design and water down to all sorts of tudey characters like Max. And the animation for every single character was the same ! Stock movement after stock movement ! I feel sorry for the poor artists who work on this crap, especially the ones who desire to work with a classic cartoon character.

Man Bob's Daffy is the best bar none!!I love the stripe around his neck.Whatta walk. whew!Good catch with the walk, what joy finding new things in cartoons you love and thought completely analyzed to a tee.This is a great post.

Forgive me drawing on the image but I notice if you scrub through that animation you can see two complimentary arcs, one following the movement of Daffys' butt, the other following the Pelicans' beak. It almost looks like a smile..maybe thats part of why it feels so good.

hey john,great post as usual. The butt walk is definitely a hilarious gag...reminds me of another moment from a tex avery cartoon called "rock-a-bye bear"...the bull dog runs on his ass cheeks while holding stuff in both hands and feet...the first time i saw that, i laughed harder than i ever have at a cartoon.